Wireless vs Ethernet – Few Crucial Things You Must Consider

In the digital age that we all live in, the world is going wireless. We can now stream music, play movies from our phone or tablet and access all kinds of cloud streaming services anywhere where we have Internet access.

There are some places where you wont see wifi router, and that’s the enterprise. Many offices have wireless access for visitors and clients but the work is done the old way.

Wired network:

Photo Credit: DELL

Pros:

Cost: It can be quite expensive to wire your entire house with high end equipment. You don’t need high level security for your home browsing habits (well, except for some I guess). It’s still not that expensive to draw a wire and connect your PC and laptop.

Reliability: There is no question about this, wire is much more stable and reliable.

Speed: Wired network provides a constant and maximum speed

Cons:

Setup: You will have to be at least somewhat proficient with networks in order to pull this off. If you have no clue about it, you will run into some major problems.

Lack of Flexibility: The biggest drawback is lack of mobility. You might want to take your laptop elsewhere in your house only to face the fact that you don’t have cable access.

Aesthetics: You will soon realize that your wired network is causing huge aesthetic mess in your home. Pulling a cable across the room to connect your laptop is no pretty sight.

Now that we have pros and cons of wired network laid out, lets see the wireless side of the story.

Wireless Connection:

Pros:

Mobility: This is a huge advantage. You can accommodate large number of devices and have them connect from any point in the room.

No Mess: Not all wireless routers are pretty, but even with that you still have considerably less clutter and mess.

Ease of setup: Even beginners can setup a router easily. Most of them are plug-n-play and do not require complicated setup.

Cons:

Cost: Good router will cost you $70-150 easily. And if you have a large house or want to cover your backyard you will have to buy multiple routers to cover every part.

Reliability: Even top of the range routers have connectivity problems behind large walls and obstacles, cheaper ones even more so.

Speed: You can not expect to have constant and maximum speed all the time with wifi compared to wire.

For average home users, who spend their time browsing and hanging on facebook and twitter, wired network is a good solution if you have a desktop PC and do not require mobility. If you like moving around a lot with your laptop, tablet or phone device, grab yourself a good wireless router and enjoy good connectivity with decent speed, unless you play World of Warcraft, in that case, you don’t need that extra lag. You know what I mean.